Rob

We're gonna have to visit the number of forums and how they're arranged. It's pretty chaotic in its current form. But we'll have a discussion about that. All the content will likely stay but we'll have to do some shuffling. I'm not in a position to really give advice HOW to do that so I'll be leaning on all of you to figure that out based on how you currently use specific forums, how often you use them, and how long they've been idle. Just some friendly advice, keeping Fred's name on the Game Threads Forum is sacrosanct. Reshuffling is fine otherwise.

Why are you worried about transparency? There was never transparency before. The modes made decisions on a case-by-case basis depending on a lot of factors. Usually, people would get warned a bunch of times and then get temporarily banned (I speak form experience here), some never came back, and some did. If they post rules or whatever, that's cool, but rules never work because there are always exceptions. I'll leave it up to them. I cannot imagine a situation where it would become untenable for most of us. But if it happens, it happens. I'll worry about that when it comes time to worry about that and then I'll bitch on my way out. I was upset early on with Tim because of the lack of transparency. But over twenty years I think we all felt out the contours of the moderation decisions and got to a place where we didn't need the transparency anymore -- the decisions became fairly intuitive. This is potentially a soft-reset on that. And I'd rather not spend twenty years feeling out the contours again.

After CubinNY posted that, he is obviously exempt from my above post asking for transparency in banning decisions. We are all on board with that one. No comparing the things we love to MAGA.

I still maintain that if you felt this way about boosting the pace of the game, there were other [better] ways to do this without the cold structure of the pitch clock. For instance, you could televise the murder of Pedro Baez as an example to the other pitchers.

Thanks for your thoughtful response to my question. Nothing about what you've said strikes me as immediately objectionable (though I do harbor some concern that premium advertisers may require more personal data be disclosed, my dumb self posts under my real name and even wrote some front page articles under that name approximately a decade ago, so I'm long-since doxxed on here...). But because you claim to appreciate the culture here, and said culture involves a lot of lovable curmudgeons, I feel it's only right that I haze you a bit by continuing to press you while you're trying to win over this group and protect your investment. I'm a little bit concerned with the moderation of the site. Will the current moderators be continuing on in their roles, and issues such as bans be left to their discretion? Or are you hoping to take an active stance and handle those matters yourself? Furthermore, would you be willing to commit to some sort of pledge of transparency regarding us old-timers? If, for instance, Kyle's relentless doom boner is scaring off new people, I'd hate to see him secretly banned over some petty nonsense with the hope that none of us notice. I'd think that people with a certain amount of seniority here (5 years? 10 years?) should warrant some sort of public disclosure for any bans and the reasoning behind them. Also, #FreeDaBum

The chess analogy is fair. I like watching/playing chess. But I gravitate towards the slower time controls. Classical is my favorite to watch. And I even play correspondence when I can. To TT's point, I don't debate that there isn't enough time to do that between pitches. But it isn't always enough time to do it leisurely. Maybe when my kids get older and I have fewer distractions... But for now, it still feels too short to me. As I said, I recognize that I'm a minority on this. But since the previous post was just talking about pearl clutching, I thought it was worth pointing out that some people have legitimate views to the contrary on this whole pitch clock thing.

Welcome to the site! I hope this question will be received in the good faith it is meant. How do you intend to monetize the site? I think all of us had just sort of assumed that internet message boards in the modern era were largely a money-losing labor of love (thanks again, Tim!). I could have seen Tim handing NSBB off to a fellow poster when he ran out of time, money, and patience for us. But I'm legitimately shocked to see it purchased. That said, I think pretty much everybody here will be happy to see this site modernized and thriving. And we will continue to do our part by being the lovely posters we have always been. But I'd like to understand what kind of changes to expect. Thanks for your consideration.

This is why it's good. There's really no downside once folks get used to it and stop their pearl clutching My favorite thing about baseball the last 20 years has been the slower pace of the game compared to other sports. I loved that the action stopped and I could sit there for a bit evaluating and speculating on what everybody on the field would be doing. Every pitch changed the optimal strategy somewhat, and I loved trying to anticipate that. There is no longer time to leisurely assess all these various shifts in strategy. I recognize that how I enjoy the game is in the minority. But let's not pretend it's just conservative pearl-clutching. There is an actual downside that sucks some of the fun out of the game for certain viewers. (though, to be fair, the Ricketts family was already doing a good job of destroying my fun the last few years.)

What provider in the Cubs/Chicago market doesn’t have Marquee? I think he's just saying he doesn't have cable.

I think that's probably a couple games low on the Cubs, but well within the fat part of the probability distribution. I'm thinking we've got a 79ish win team on the average, but with some potential to get up to 87 or so with enough luck on health and player development / bouncebacks We aren't the 2015 Cubs. I don't see the youth explosion. But there's a nice combination of vets who have some upside compared to their recent performance.

I've always been down on Correa compared to most, and higher on Dansby. So I'm fine with this.

Depends on how you define it, but guys with significant offensive improvement on past form would be Montero, Valbuena, Coghlan, and Wisdom in recent years. Further back you have Aramis, Lee, Barrett, and Todd Walker too. Have we come full circle? Do we want Jim Hendry back?

I thought Chad Fox and Scott Williamson had, but apparently those were other procedures... Likewise, Jason Isringhausen and Jose Rijo were able to eke out a couple replacement level years, but there's some debate as to whether all those surgeries were correctly categorized as Tommy Johns. Josh Johnson made it as far as a comeback attempt and a minor league deal, but no further. If you're looking for the best case scenario, Jonny Venters was briefly effective after a third confirmed Tommy John.

Trade bait would be my guess.

I was rooting against the Astros mostly for the cheating thing. As far as that particular trade is concerned, he also voiced that a good chunk of his opposition was because Urquidy was pitching as well as anybody on his staff at the trade deadline. Which is fair. From June 1 to Aug 3, he had a 2.86 ERA. While I'm still salty about Dusty's time here as the manager, he does seem to have learned a lot of lessons from it (though clearly not all he needed to). He should never be making front office decisions, but his in-game ones are mostly fine now. But on a personal level, he's always seemed like a good dude, so I wasn't upset to see him get a ring.

I don't wanna make it sound like you can't disagree with me. I'm a known idiot. To me it's just known (online) cheater puts up an incredibly improbable result that includes a suspicious move he can't explain. Oh, I'm just being cheeky. I've done very little personal investigation into the matter. I just see a bunch of articles by math nerds saying there's no way he didn't cheat. And a bunch saying he definitely did cheat. So I'm calling the quantitative work a wash (though I'd probably look much harder at that if I actually cared about the matter). Qualitatively, we have a kid who definitely cheated in the past. So that works against him. But Magnus is also a bit of a character, so I'm not surprised to see him creating drama. To me, that leaves this whole affair sitting around a coinflip. Not enough to warrant any real impact on this kid going forward, in my opinion... but enough to justify a renewed conversation about the security at these sorts of events. That said, I'm really hoping we get livestreams of the participants forced proctological exams at future events. That's what we're all here for, right?

I'm less convinced than Kyle that Hans cheated. Given our respective grasps on the game, that probably means he cheated.

I know what would make baseball better. Let's have a team of hitters and team of fielders and a team of pitchers. It wouldn't actually be baseball, but it would be... something. knockoff sofa wannabe. I mean, if you're gonna go that route, I think you just have two hitters (one righty, one lefty) and a handful of designated runners. It would certainly be cheaper for the owners than employing a whole team of hitters.

If they extend him, it's worse. I love Willson, and he's been so fun to watch. I do not anticipate him aging well. Any deal longer than 3 years or so shouldn't be seriously entertained.

As a Cubs fan, I can only think of a few times where we had a pitcher that was so dominant that I woke up excited on the days they started because I knew the Cubs were going to win that game. Second half 2003 Prior and Second half 2015 Arrieta are really in a class of their own. I never would have imagined that he'd be out of baseball 2.5 years later i remember his first start against the pirates. I watched it with a friend, then we went to a party and interrupted it to watch the highlights on sportscenter lol To this day, I think the filthiest at bat I ever saw was Mark Prior v. Frank Thomas. He was throwing some low and away breaking stuff that was making a hitter the caliber of Frank Thomas look totally outmatched.

I picked up Prior in the new MLB game, and it's so depressing to use him and remember what could have been. Looking at the list of best pitching seasons since 2000 it's littered with people who are in the Hall of Fame or got darn close to it before injuries derailed them. And there's Mark Prior sitting by himself. Wishing he even had the longevity of Lincecum or Ben Sheets. They at least made it to 32/33. Prior was only 25 when he threw his last pitch in the majors.

At this point, I think we all know I'm a bit of a traditionalist with baseball, and that's mostly manifested itself by hating all the new rules they're putting out there. But if the end result looks more like the baseball I remember, I'll consider the whole thing a net positive. That's why, of the new rules, I liked largely-invisible changes like deadening the baseball, and the larger bases making stealing a bit easier and encouraging some emphasis on aspects of the game other than strikeouts and home runs. I would love to see more changes in that vein. For that matter, I think getting pitcher roster limits tuned correctly could potentially alleviate some of these other annoying rules, like the three-batter minimum. If a team has just a handful of relievers, I think the tactical and strategic decisions of whether to roster LOOGYs, and how to utilize them, could be a lot of fun. When can we get back to half the pitchers in the league being big fat tubs of goo. I need role models, who I identify with, playing pro sports again It wasn't just pitchers. I miss Matt LeCroy.

I mean, the Ross thing makes sense. If you have a mild injury and will be back to playing full time in 2-3 days, it doesn't hurt to have teams trying to guess what it is that's injured. If it's a back injury or something, you're probably riding the pine regardless. But a toe injury or something could still see him pinch hitting and getting pulled for a pinch runner. It's not the worst thing in the world to make the other team prepare as if he might be able to play.

At this point, I think we all know I'm a bit of a traditionalist with baseball, and that's mostly manifested itself by hating all the new rules they're putting out there. But if the end result looks more like the baseball I remember, I'll consider the whole thing a net positive. That's why, of the new rules, I liked largely-invisible changes like deadening the baseball, and the larger bases making stealing a bit easier and encouraging some emphasis on aspects of the game other than strikeouts and home runs. I would love to see more changes in that vein. For that matter, I think getting pitcher roster limits tuned correctly could potentially alleviate some of these other annoying rules, like the three-batter minimum. If a team has just a handful of relievers, I think the tactical and strategic decisions of whether to roster LOOGYs, and how to utilize them, could be a lot of fun.

I think it's fair to say people were largely brushing aside the Ricketts political views in the early going. But I would argue against that lasting through the whole 2016-2019 run. I was able to put it aside in 2016 because, like most people, I thought Trump had zero chance of winning. When he did, I started paying a lot more attention to who had been supportive of him. For me, the Ricketts honeymoon lasted about a month after the championship before I quickly soured on them. I root for the team in spite of ownership. But I have totally stopped sending my money their way.